Perfectionism and Autism?

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I've always been a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to writing. I am never satisfied with what I write and I am always redoing what I write or say. It's a habit that I've always had. The hard part is that this always seems to cause me problems when I am writing since, if it's not perfect, I give up on it rather quickly and move on to another writing project, only to have it happen again...

That's why i wanted to ask you guys if this has anything to do with autism or not? If not, what could this be? It seems it's been getting worse, almost to an extreme of sorts... if you get what I' saying.

I'd personally interpret it as wanting to get things right... rather than wrong, which is unacceptable... but in the end it is all the same sorta thing.

Well, I'm not really sure what causes it either. I always feel like it's more disabling than anything. It's like, I can't seem to get things just right so I give up rather easily on what I'm doing. It's mostly when I am writing.

I also have this kind of perfectionism, but with me, it extends to a lot of my activities. Hobbies, like drawing, I'm not satisfied if it's mediocre, and if it ends up being mediocre and I can't fix it, I'll give up altogether and start the next project; or learning about things, I'm a completist when it comes to amassing knowledge on my special interests, sometimes getting bogged down on small details and factoids. Also, at work, I'm usually a perfectionist, trying to perform my tasks to my fullest capabilities, even where relaxing a bit is appropriate.

I always thought that this was indeed an aspect of autism, that this is common among people on the spectrum. And yes, my perfectionism sometimes slows me down as I've described above.

Heh, I was about to post such a thread today. Apparently I don't have to anymore.

I am also perfectionistic, my time-span of being satisfied with something ranges from 5 minutes to max. 2 days, then I'll look at what I did and think "I am disappointed, I could have done better...".
This means, if I am satisfied with something beyond the 2 day maximum, it must be something special.

I'm generally not a perfectionist, but I am when it comes to writing a post on the internet too. I can't let there be a mistake. I don't know how some people can have an obvious mistake in their title and don't do anything about it, like missing out a letter in a word and not notice it. Really annoys me, but I suppose everyone's different.

I am not sure if it is an autistic trait or a personality trait. I tend to do the same thing when I write, especially if it requires a description. I go over it a hundred times tweaking and changing till I get frustrated.
So if anyone has the answer I am interested in it as well.

Sorry, my lousy iPhone posted twice!

Last edited by stitch4518 on 09 Jan 2013, 2:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Disabling... perhaps...
But I suspect what is most disabling about it is the way others just don't care. The way the average..... ok, so I'm complaining about mundies again.... but the point is they have absolutely no care nor concern for how they do things, and leave so much in a mess just because everything they do is half-arsed.... frequently leaving me to clean up their mess after them.

It is why I frequently refer to my job bitterly as a "data janitor"... because I have to keep cleaning up the sh!t people leave strewn haphazardly and half-arsedly throughout our client database.

I've heard that there are a lot of writers on WP - and that as you post a lot and learn to think up words quicker, you tend to get better at writing in itself.

One of the teachers at my school says it's okay to continue on past that part and think it up some other time. It's hard to not follow that instinct, but sometimes it helps ^^

That's something that bothers me too! Like, if I see that I have typos in what I write or something, I have to go back and correct them immediately.

I tend to be like that too. Since I am not a native English speaker, I try to improve my skills, that's why I appreciate it, if someone points out mistakes.

I am the same. It takes me over an hour to write a single paragraph. It is painful, but I want it to be "correctly done". I have been wondering myself if it is autism, too. Google keeps leading to children's hand writing and I have found nothing about difficulty with writing English is autistic. It seems some of us have less trouble writing, so I'm thinking it is somewhat common with us.

As with all of my weaknesses I continually work to over come it. But writing has had the least improvement.
A single paragraph will have so many changes to it is hard to keep the original meaning. It is so frustrating. Still I strive to improve.

Reading was much easier. By my 40's I was reading popular books. I still love reading books, but it takes so much time as I am a very slow reader, too.

Still, I continue struggling to improve my writing ability to this very day.

The biggest cause of the difficulty in writing is converting pictures to my personal language, then to written English.

It makes little difference if I am typing or hand writing, If I have to write in pen, I draft a penciled copy, then copy in pen. Nothing like spending a whole day writing a single page....

Ich denke, es gibt ja ein Komma zu viel... Der dritte sieht mir überflüssig aus, also: "...that's why I appreciate it if someone points out mistakes" wäre auch gut gewesen.

I never speak or type German anymore since secondary school 10 years ago, so I probably used a couple of wrong words-- feel free to point out any mistakes in the above sentence, Sylvastor!

I will get angry if I can't find where I put something in my car.

(and similar things, which I guess is executive functioning)

The mistakes actually add texture to writing. Something can be sanded down and re-worked too many times.

I like the model of journalism. If we make a mistake, we matter-of-factly acknowledge it and we continue to roll forward. We also have multiple projects going on at the same time.